Jon Carroll on Purring

Jon Carroll of the SF Chronicle (now retired) was the finest daily column writer ever to grace an American newspaper, although Adair Lara of the Chronicle and Doug Baker of the Oregon Journal were almost as good.  He regularly wrote columns about his cats, which I have mentioned frequently in this column.

My cat Patrice was purring on my lap this morning, which reminded me of a Carroll column that said purring was not always a sign of contentment. Searching for it led me to another purring column, about purrs containing baby cry frequencies, that also came up this week on the Netflix cat documentary.

And, in this Internet age of heedless use of the memory hole, thanks to the Chronicle for maintaining an excellent on-line archive. It’s one of the reasons I pay for paper and print subscriptions.